BETSEY AND I ARE OUT. Draw up the papers, lawyer, and make 'em good and stout;For things at home are crossways, and Betsey and I are out.We, who have worked together so long as man and wife,Must pull in single harness for the rest of our nat'ral life. "What is the matter?" say you. I swan it's hard to tell!Most of the years behind us we've passed by very well;I have no other... more...

“And hard by doth dwell, in St. Catherine’s cell, Ambrose, the anchorite old and grey.”—The Lay of St. Nicholas. Ambrose the anchorite old and greyLarruped himself in his lonely cell,And many a welt on his pious peltThe scourge evoked as it rose and fell. For hours together the flagellant leatherWent whacketty-whack with his groans of pain;And the lay-brothers said, with a wag of the... more...

CHAPTER I. A MILL-HAND'S MANSION. 'It's a dreadful thing to have a father you don't respect,' said Sarah Clay, as she walked into the gilded and beautifully painted drawing-room of the aforesaid father's mansion in Yorkshire. Her mother gave a little, sharp scream, and let fall the book she was holding in her hand. Sarah came forward swiftly, picked it up, and turned it... more...

CHAPTER I EVENING IN GLENAVELIN From the heart of a great hill land Glenavelin stretches west and south to the wider Gled valley, where its stream joins with the greater water in its seaward course. Its head is far inland in a place of mountain solitudes, but its mouth is all but on the lip of the sea, and salt breezes fight with the flying winds of the hills. It is a land of green meadows on the brink... more...

Preface. This tale is the last from the pen of Captain Mayne Reid, whose stories have so long been the delight of English boys. Our readers may, perhaps, like to know something of the writer who has given them so much pleasure; especially as his own life was full of adventure and of brave deeds. Mayne Reid was born in the north of Ireland in 1819; his father was a Presbyterian minister, and wished that... more...

Chapter One. The stout trading brig Amity, Samuel Mudge master and part owner, was gliding up Plymouth Sound on a summer’s evening towards her accustomed berth in Catwater, a few years before the termination of the last war between England and France. She had no pilot on board; indeed, her crew averred that the old craft could find the way in and out of the harbour by herself; at all events, her... more...

WOMEN O' DULDITCH Dinah Brome stood in the village shop, watching, with eyes keen to detect the slightest discrepancy in the operation, the weighing of her weekly parcels of grocery. She was a strong, wholesome-looking woman of three- or four-and-forty, with a clean, red skin, clear eyes, dark hair, crinkling crisply beneath her sober, respectable hat. All her clothes were sober and respectable,... more...

PREFACE The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the leading events of modern times. Without the birth of this great commonwealth, the various historical phenomena of: the sixteenth and following centuries must have either not existed; or have presented themselves under essential modifications.—Itself an organized protest against ecclesiastical tyranny and universal empire, the... more...

INTRODUCTION. The Phaedrus is closely connected with the Symposium, and may be regarded either as introducing or following it. The two Dialogues together contain the whole philosophy of Plato on the nature of love, which in the Republic and in the later writings of Plato is only introduced playfully or as a figure of speech. But in the Phaedrus and Symposium love and philosophy join hands, and one is... more...

CHAPTER I All my life I have had an awareness of other times and places.  I have been aware of other persons in me.—Oh, and trust me, so have you, my reader that is to be.  Read back into your childhood, and this sense of awareness I speak of will be remembered as an experience of your childhood.  You were then not fixed, not crystallized.  You were plastic, a soul in flux, a consciousness and an... more...